The present invention relates to a radio portable communication system and, more particularly, to an information search system for searching for information by using packet communication over a radio portable terminal.
In an information search system using packet communication over portable telephones, an operator selects a search word from search items displayed on the screen of a portable telephone or inputs a search word as characters by operating keys on the portable telephone and transmits the search word in a packet to an information provider. The information provider searches for information on the basis of the received search word, and then returns the found information to the portable telephone upon packeting it. The found information is displayed on the screen of the portable telephone.
As a system capable of easily searching for information, other than the above system using packet communication, an information search system using speech communication over portable telephones is available. In this information search system using speech communication, an uttered search word is speech-recognized and information is searched out by the information provider on the basis of the recognized search word. Thereafter, the found information is converted into speech and returned to the portable telephone.
In the information search system using packet communication, however, when many search words are prepared, they cannot be displayed on the window of the portable telephone at once. For this reason, search items must be arranged in a tree structure and a search word must be selected while pictures on the screen are switched. However, it takes time to reach the target search word.
As another method of inputting a search word, a method of inputting a search word as characters by operating key buttons on a portable telephone is available. However, the keys on the portable telephone are small in size. In addition, since a plurality of characters are assigned to one key, cumbersome operation is required, and much time is required for the operation.
In the above information search system using speech communication, a search word can be easily input by speech over a portable telephone. However, a search result is returned by speech and is not recorded. In addition, image information cannot be returned to the portable telephone.